


let mine be the last

by Stonestrewn



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dragons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 01:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3709816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/pseuds/Stonestrewn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is only frightened until she realizes the span of her wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let mine be the last

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thegoddamnknightshade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoddamnknightshade/gifts).



_Here lies the abyss, the well of all souls._  
_From these emerald waters doth life begin anew._  
_Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you._  
_In my arms lies Eternity._

\--

The witch comes as she lies dying.

“My, but isn’t this a shame,” she says, and her voice is not one but many.

The nightmare is dead. The fear has fallen, a triumph over terror, but the hand that wielded the blade has stilled, life fading fast. On her back, her body feels a faraway thing. The woman whose name is Hawke, the one they call the Champion, looks into a sky that is no sky while her soul struggles to stay.

The witch she knows as Flemeth, the one with more names than there are people to say them, kneels on ground that is no ground and sweeps the sweat-soaked strands from her forehead.

“Child,” she says, and her smile is a flurry of shadows. “If I said there was one more life for you, would you trust it to be true? If I said you could yet rise, would you dare the fall?””

The woman known as Hawke has not enough air in her lungs to speak, but the witch reads the blood bubbling from her lips, and she smiles and smiles.

“Dear girl, the end is only the beginning.”

There is a pain, too sharp and cold and piercing to endure. When her thoughts cease to be, it is a mercy.

\--

Waking makes her wish for death back.

Consciousness comes crashing in, breaks into too bright light, too much hard sound, too sharp air in her lungs, it is like knives in her throat and she is gasping, wants it out of her. The life she held onto so hard, now that it holds her back she wants out of its grasp.

Her body is too close, too hot. Too heavy to be inside, it crushes her, she needs to writhe out of it, out of this skin and this blasted heat but she is stuck. Her skull is a leaden weight. Her tongue is a numb slab of flesh.

She drifts back and forth, there and not there, until her own prolonged existence is no longer a thing she can deny. She stirs, she tries to rise.

Her spine is wrong. It is the oddest feeling, it bends impossibly, her neck extends too far, her feet and legs are misremembered and her arms - she stares at them, the deep black scales, the glossy shine.

She runs her tongue over her teeth, finds fangs. She tries to use her voice, gets only growling. She twists and spins around, tries to get the picture, comprehend the mass of her, that it is her.

Dragon. _Her._  
  
She is only frightened until she realizes the span of her wings.

\--

Flying is everything she thought it would be.

Freedom. Might. Uncontested grandeur, a joy too large to be contained in the smallness of words. It is _everything._

She roars and delights at the strength of the sound. She breathes fire and finds it doesn’t burn her. The first flailing tries before she lifted off the ground are already far behind her; she inhabits this body as though it was her very first.

When hunger makes itself known deep in her belly she dives for cattle, seized by the same fierce frenzy that would overtake her when raiders or outlaws or anyone who dared the challenge died by her sword, except she is the only weapon she needs now. The happiness of teeth and claws, of bones snapping in her mouth and skin tearing under her talons, she savors it all.

She always loved the smell of fresh blood - she finds the taste of it intoxicating.

\--

She could let herself go.

Glide on the wind wherever it would take her. Hunt and sleep and fly, claim a corner of the world and live a life of simplicity impossible before. No loss, no grief, no memories and musts. A now, and only that, her only drive her hunger and her thirst for blood and sun.

She could, but she will not.

The woman who was known as Hawke, she is not dead. Her bonds survive, her people and her promises.

The woman who is a dragon lets the stars lead her east, to where the horizon is all jagged mountain tops, to the castle that grazes the sky.

\--

They scurry away from her like little frightened nugs, return with swords the size of toothpicks.

And arrows. And magic. Grenades and trebuchets, and at that point it is no longer amusing.

She withdraws to lick her wounds on a landing two valleys over, her back against the rock wall, an abyss on each side. They did not recognize her and she could not call.

They were all there: the soldiers and the scouts, the Inquisitor in all her chosen glory at the front, Cassandra by her side, back straight, shield up. The others around them. The Tevinter mage, the elves, that lumbering qunari. Sister Nightingale on the tower roof, her arrows as flaming as her hair.

And Varric. She has his poison numbing her toes. He did not know her either, his eyes were only anger, fear and fighting.

Next time she tries to land and breaks the smithy roof swinging her tail. She tries to show them, keeps her fire in and her jaw closed and her talons barely scratching, despite the violence boiling under her skin. Cassandra is the most vicious. The way she taunts, the way she charges, the way her sword flashes and cuts and it is aggravating

She wants her voice. The claws she can keep. The tail she quite likes. The wings and the fire and the red spots against the black - all of this can stay. She only wants her voice. She wants it bad.

Cunning is not her way, but force has taken her nowhere.

The third time she goes for Skyhold she does not linger, she touches down only for a second, ascends with Cassandra in her grasp.

Cassandra, because Varric hurts too much.

\--

In retrospect, her reasoning could have been sounder.

She thought, Cassandra. Because Cassandra admired, because Cassandra had heard. Because everyone who knew her is so far away, but Cassandra knew the story. Cassandra could know her.

Her forelegs are covered with lesions, she has lost one toe entirely. She cannot land, or Cassandra attacks anew, crying war and waging murder. She roars her frustration at the mountains and the wordless echo is a mockery. Circling, circling, why won’t Cassandra understand?

The endless flying wears her out, brings the hunger. She leaves Cassandra, finds a few too skinny goats. They live on nearly nothing on these slopes. Returning, she drops a half chewed carcass on the seeker’s head, because it only serves her right. Curses fly at her but she flies faster.

Blood pools on the rock. Blood, and she knows the thought that takes her reaches far, but all the options nearer led to nought.

She lands, close to the edge. Cassandra, blade always ready, takes her stance.

She dips a toe in the blood. Cassandra watches, wary.

She draws it across her nose, a slash of red on her face, and Cassandra glares, frowns, until her eyes widen.

They stare at each other, dragon and hunter, until Cassandra slowly sheaths her blade.

\--

She carries Cassandra on her back.

She sits on her neck behind her head, and she can feel the tension in her legs. As there is tension in her flight, from remembering the sword. The cuts still smart.

Cassandra could plunge her blade into the dragon’s neck; the dragon could throw the human off to certain death. Neither of them do.

They make impact with the courtyard bathed in morning sun, the trebuchets are still, scared to hurt her burden. Cassandra slides from her neck, throws up her hands.

“Wait!” she cries. “I know this will sound outrageous-” but she is not the one who who states it in the end.

Varric looks up at the dragon, at the smudge of red on black, and his mouth has fallen open.

“Hawke?”

He is so small. So small that it is painful, she could step on him and never notice. She buffs his head, he touches her nose, and his hand is the size of her nostril.

His eyes are grief, relief, disbelief.

“ _Now_ what kind of letters do i write?”

\--

The young witch shakes her head. She does not know how to reverse the spell, or where the old witch went. The young witch knows of mirrors, of things old and undead, and she puts her own plans first and always foremost.

The dragon is not much distressed to not be the woman Hawke for now. She is more help like this.

The battles are inferno where she swoops in from high above, wreaking havoc over crystal men and templar terrors. She gets to bite and tear and conquer, anger blossoming in blood, and after she has feasted her spot in the courtyard will be strewn with straw.

Only Varric is a sadness, how he wishes their talks back, but she thinks if he was her then he, too, would understand.

Cassandra is the one that she lets ride her. Cassandra is called dragon tamer now.

They are a striking pair. The Seeker and her beast, the monster and her pet. Killer companions and comrades in arms, and friends even outside of slaughter. Cassandra seeks her company, sits often by her side, and the dragon curls around her, breathing hotly in her hair.

Once, Cassandra tries to read to her. She sets the book on fire.

\--

They are her people now.

From the shining knight to the stable boy, from the masked and glittering to the muddy barefoot.

She fights for them, and so she owns them, and the feeling streams ferociously from deep within her chest. This castle is her new-claimed home, these humans are her flock, these elves are her wards, these dwarves her brood, the qunari her children. She loves them, in her fashion.

Love is easy from above.

\--

The call comes gently.

It is not like song, it is a pull, but not like rope around her neck but threads of silk hooked to her veins. It comes one night and her wings spread. Her wings spread, and her people are forgotten.

The call takes her to a green place, to lush heat and damp wilderness. Grass between her toes, palmtrees brushing her sides. The air is full of smells, her head of nothing.

She serves, but knows not whom. She guards, but knows not what.

She forgets her woman self for servant dragon.

\--

Remembrance, understanding, comes in pieces, altar first.

The altar is the thing she guards, the thing she loves and serves. No - serving is for for living things, the living thing that pulls. Living, old and large, and pulling. She loves the altar, serves the god.

When she knows _serve_ , she is content. When she knows _fight_ , she is delighted. There are others at the altar, her altar that she loves, and fighting them will be her serving duty.

The second remembrance is their eyes.

She lands before these small, defiling others, ready for the tearing, but she looks into their eyes and she knows names, knows remembered things.  
.  
Varric, and a city home, a life carved painstakingly from nothing. A life hard won but fiercely loved, family found in booze as well as blood. Cassandra, and another life, a second skin. New limbs, new strength, new chances.

She is Hawke. The woman Hawke. The woman Hawke who has become the dragon.

God and altar fall away. Serve separates from fight. The god she knows again as Flemeth, as a witch, as one of two.

The old witch who carries ages under her skin, the new witch who carried a child.  
She knows it all back, knows to feel rage that it was ever taken. And still, the call is with her. Still, the pulling forces her to fight.

“I am sorry,” says Cassandra, and draws.

\--

Defeat, for once, is victory.

She carries them to battle on her back, Cassandra first. She is the dragon Hawke, she has her people and her friends, and when she fights for them it is not serving, it is choice.

The ground below her is a blur. The wind is gladness. Her heart is sky. Her people is a weight so small she does not feel the burden.

Once, she fought for a city. Today she will fight for a world.

\--

The red-tainted dragon tastes vile.

She bites into it with ferocity new and frighteningly hot even for her, she buries her claws into its flesh and scrapes the bone.

They fight flying, broken temple all around, broken sky and broken ground and broken beings. There are dead here. Old dead and new dead and how dare these vile things hurt her world so.

The dragon fights, and her woman-heart burns. Old grief and new grief and how _dare_. Old loss and new loss and when will she have lost enough? The woman-hearted dragon has a face to stand for every slash, a name to honor with her every blow.

Yet it is not enough.

Her wing catches on rock, her flight becomes unsteady, open. It rips and shreds, for teeth and claw, and she falls until her head hits stone.

-

But once again, she wakes.

Death is not to be for her, she thinks she understands this now. This was her gift, her return for the intended servitude. She thinks, all things considered, that she has struck a bargain.

The fight is over. The day is won. When she lands in her new home-castle and scans the faces in the crowds, the finds all her most important are still there.

Varric cries, and not a little. Cassandra has a smile saved just for her.

The celebrations last and last. The dragon thinks they all have earned it. She herself, she needs no parties, she is beyond such pleasures now. She lies out in the courtyard, lets her thought run where they wish to.

When the Seeker comes to join her, leaning against her side, she drifts off to sleep.

\--

Peace is a fraught and fragile thing.

It lasts in places, in others it does not. People always finds reasons to kill.

The dragon flies over the land and lets the people run their course. Through the forests and the dales, in the valleys and the cities, on the rivers and the seas. The people will be people. She will not.

The old witch is gone. The new witch has wandered. Her scales and claws and teeth and tail are eternity, now.

There are those who would grieve for her. The woman Hawke would not.

Time passes. She flies.

\--

On an eastern shore a woman raises a proud but ailing hand, and toasts in beer she bought for raided money. She drinks to wind and wave, to friend and foe, to the loves she lost and found and set adrift.

An elf with daisies in her hair and scars on every finger gathers the children of the alienage around to tell the story of the man who once told hers. A spirit tangled in a mage leans heavy on the staff, squints with cloudy eyes against the past. A free man draws his sword and cuts himself another piece of future. A sister visits three graves and goes into the depths to make her own. A captain settles down to rest, one husband on her shoulder and the other far beyond.

A seeker and a friend walks to where the dragon lies. Her hair is white, her legs are stiff, but her eyes are just as fierce and bright as always.

“We are about to turn the page,” she says. “You, alone, will be there to see what comes next.”

She sits against the dragon’s side, as so many times before. She feels each heavy breath, she hears the heartbeat, ever steady.

“Will you miss us when we’re gone, I wonder?”

The dragon has no voice with which to speak, but she curls around the woman, she breathes her heat over her withered friend, she chases the cold away.

\--

They call her The Hawke.

There is a story of a woman, a tale of a champion, a legend of a new thing rising up against old gods. She sits on the truth like a throne, presides over history while the years slip by in twos and threes, too small and quick to count each one by number.

The woman is alive within her still. Her righteous rage, her leading love, her hope that is a steadfast, stubborn strength. When the old horrors rise again as the old horrors do, she will be there and she will fight for her people.

For the son that died in his mother’s arms, for every parent torn too early from their children. For the brothers and sisters divided by war, for the siblings standing shoulder to shoulder. For those who redeem, for those who repent, for those who bend their neck and take their judgment. For the blighted and the blessed, for the spirits and the ghosts, for the free and shackled, for the safe and sundered.

For the soft words whispered in the middle of the night, for the beloved and precious.

The sun sets silent behind the jagged mountain tops, run red and ragged overseeing all the trials of the day.

She spreads her wings. Her shadow embraces the world.


End file.
